An erythematous red1 was often observed along the edges of the feet or hands, and the sensibility, though generally heightened, was occasionally diminished, so that they sometimes said that in walking " they did not feel the ground." loeali/ed in small patches, and not always accompanied by other scorbutic symptoms. It was.1 combined, too, with fever or dysi -ntery. not uiitre.jiiently followed by desijuapi.ition of the epidermis, and by i,.r; d gangrene. In typhoid fever and scurvy, symptoms of a much less pronounced character, but withal similar as to numbness, formication, and hypersesthesia, are sometimes seen at home. In India a somewhat similar affection of the feet, called by writers " burning feet," is mentioned by various as being a most distressing disease of the Sepoys, and looked upon as being a sequela of rheumatism, and having its origin in the spinal cord.
All local treatment seemed unavailing in the Crimea, though stimulant and anodyne embrocations, hot and cold pediluvia, and shampooing appeared at times to assuage it. It disappeared as the general health and the state of the blood improved. Blisters were tried by some, but were manifestly injurious, and at times appeared to favour sloughing, from the low vitality of the part. It must be allowed that this affection, as it appeared in the East, bore a very close resemblance to the "mal des pieds et des mains" as it occurred in Paris in 1828. The writers of that periodf tell us of the same pricking and formication of the feet and hands, the same streaking along their edges, the same alternating heightened and diminished sensibility, the oedema, dark patches on the limbs, and desquamation of the epidermis, lancinating pains, and great heat of the parts increased at night, which were all so marked with us; but they * See J.
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